Articles Posted in Live

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Venn Crawford

Thanksgiving is next week, and if you haven’t started planning your meal, it’s definitely time to start. If you’re short on ideas or tired of making the same thing, that’s ok! I’ve gathered some of the best Thanksgiving recipes for you to wow your friends and family with at dinner. I’ve also added tips to help you cook faster, tastier, and healthier.

Bon appetit and happy Thanksgiving!

Potatoes Au Gratin is easy to make and is one of my favorite side dishes. This cheesy potato casserole has layers of thin potatoes with a quick homemade cheese sauce and is baked until browned and bubbly! Pretty enough for guests, easy enough for any day of the week!

Au Gratin Potatoes with Gruyere Cheese
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Venn Crawford

I know that kale has spent some time as a fad food, but I have to admit that I’m sold on it. I’m not crazy about kale by itself, as it tends to be a bit bitter, but this massaged kale salad is incredible. You can make it with any kind of kale, but my favorites are the deeper green varieties, such as Tuscan kale.

Massaged kale salad unsurprisingly starts out with kale. Make sure to rinse it well. Tear the leaves off the stems and break them into small pieces, setting them aside in a bowl. Add the lemon juice and salt, and massage the kale as if you’re kneading bread. As you massage it, the kale should start to break down and become darker in color. Depending on your hand strength, this can take several minutes.

Once the kale has been massaged with the lemon juice, drizzle it with a bit of olive oil and massage for another minute. You don’t want to add too much olive oil here, though. If it creates a noticeable pool in the bottom of the bowl, it’s too much.

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Venn Crawford

Halloween is for all things spooky and creepy, and so slime fits right into the October aesthetic. In the spirit of all things ghoulish, I’ve created an ectoplasm slime recipe for you to try. All you need is borax, Elmer’s glue, water, and food coloring (you can find borax with laundry supplies at most stores).

Multicolor Slime Misadventures

Originally, I wanted to make a black, orange, and purple slime. When I made the purple, I realized it would take far too much food coloring to do black. So, I decided to make orange and purple.

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Venn Crawford

Last week, I gave you my chicken tortilla soup recipe. This week I bring you my baked potato soup, another cold weather favorite. This recipe is great for lazy weekend mornings when it’s too cold to go outside – or anytime you need some warm comfort food. Continue reading

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Venn Crawford

It’s finally getting colder, which means it’s soup season! I love soups because they’re easy to make, easy to experiment with, and the leftovers still taste amazing. One of my favorite soup recipes is chicken tortilla soup. My version was originally based on two different recipes, but in the three years I’ve been making it, it’s evolved into a delicious chicken tortilla and black bean soup hybrid.

I typically make everything from scratch for my soups, roasting a chicken and making broth from the giblets. I’ve provided a shorter version here that uses premade broth and chicken breasts. However, if you’d like to try making it from scratch, I’ve included recipes for the roasted chicken and the broth at the bottom, so skip down and follow those first. Continue reading

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Venn Crawford

It’s October – a month of harvests and haunts. If you haven’t gotten in the spirit yet, here’s a list of haunted happenings in the triad to get you started. The first list covers kid-friendly events, while the second contains spookier events for adults. Click the dates to see the event website. Continue reading

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Venn Crawford

It’s October, which means everything in stores is pumpkin flavored and orange. But another bounty of the season’s harvest is corn, and there’s no corn more delicious than elotes.

Elotes are grilled corn on the cob coated with a creamy, cheesy chili sauce. They’re commonly sold by street vendors in Mexico, pierced through with a skewer for easy eating.

Because the only cooking required is grilling the corn, you can easily make elotes at home. This recipe is great to make with kids, for dinner dates, or just as a snack. The sauce stores well too, so you can make it in advance for whenever you’re craving elotes. A little forewarning though – despite being easy to make, this recipe is messy to eat. Make sure you have napkins handy, as the sauce tends to get all over your cheeks. Continue reading

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Venn Crawford

Japanese Udon is a thick wheat noodle, often served in a rich broth. This recipe is perfect for date nights, as it’s light, delicious, and makes a tasty surprise for someone who’s never had it before.

Don’t be daunted by the long list of ingredients – this recipe is incredibly simple to make. Continue reading

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Venn Crawford

Tomorrow is National North Carolina Day – a day celebrating the history and growth of our home state. Of course, North Carolina Day is the perfect excuse to go on an outing with family, have a solo adventure, or plan a unique date. And with the large number of attractions in and around Greensboro, there’s no need to travel far for a bit of fun.

One of the most well-known attractions in town is the Greensboro Science Center. The center features a zoo, aquarium, the SkyWild (an aerial rope course), and museum exhibits on the human body and weather. A personal favorite exhibit of mine is the gibbon exhibit – this family of monkeys has a wild, mischievous baby gibbon that swings around the exhibit, teasing the older monkeys and causing about as much trouble as the toddlers on the other side of the glass. Continue reading

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Carolyn Woodruff

Caviar has never been on my list of loves before now. But, I will still be skeptical of caviar that is not fresh and more than a day old. Choice fresh Russian caviar is beluga sturgeon from Volgograd on the Caspian Sea. Taliat Tarsinov grew up there, and he is quite the expert in caviar.

At the Beluga Restaurant in Moscow with an awesome view of Red Square, caviar is expected and lavishly served. Our table of five ordered two bowls of caviar: one beluga and one a more salted sturgeon. We ate the caviar on toast points with butter and on crepes. Of course, we used the tiny individual spoons for dipping the caviar and spreading it on the toast points or crepes. I don’t have a set of these tiny spoons in my kitchen, by the way.

We had a flight of vodka shots: Putkinya, lemon, courrant, cranberry, and one more like a whiskey. Vodka is great with the caviar, but bear meat jerky also accompanied the vodka shots. Bear meat jerky tastes a lot like deer jerky and is a great compliment to vodka. Of course, we had lots of pickles also. I think the vodka is wheat based, and the Beluga Restaurant has their own brand of vodka. The Putkinya vodka was in honor of President Putin.

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